


All Was Golden

by GraphicAvengers



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Courf and Combeferre are mostly just mentioned, Gen, I wrote this like almost a year ago for my friend, Implied/Referenced Suicide, It's just mentioned in passing tbh not even in explicit terms but, M/M, Oops, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Suicide Attempt, around where their soulmate first touches them, basically everyone has a moving mark, just in case, oh man okay, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 22:03:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6826573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraphicAvengers/pseuds/GraphicAvengers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras had been more or less indifferent to the idea of soulmates for most of his life; he was a firm believer that a person should love whomever they love, but he wasn't one to slander soul marks and their potential altogether. He found that they acted like physical representations of bonds, such as the two he wore marking his closest friends. Beyond that, he didn't heed them much. And then his third mark appeared, years before an ill-mannered artist stumbled into his life.</p><p>That, he thinks, is when things really changed.</p><p>----</p><p>In other words: Enjolras is wary, but cares, and he and Grantaire have kind of shitty luck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Was Golden

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've ever published, which is fitting because I'm pretty sure it was the first one I ever shared. It's kind of a weird one because it's so? Vaguely written? Hence the summary being a little mismatched tbh I def going to need some time to figure out how to summarize the more vague fics I write
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy! I'm always open to constructive crit, despite this actually being a slightly outdated fic as far as my writing style goes aha
> 
> I also have no clue how the fuck to format on here oops
> 
> Here goes nothing, I suppose

Antoine Enjolras was never one to follow orders blindly. Ever since he’d been able, he’d always had a question on the tip of his tongue. Where some people would respond to the order to jump with, “How high?” and others yet would reply, “Just how high do you want to jump, and can I do it on my own terms?” Enjolras would reply, “Why do you want me to jump, and why should I oblige?”

Now, do not misunderstand; Enjolras was a kind young man with a passionate love of people as a whole, but he was also driven, ambitious, and perhaps above all, he was independant. He preferred to make his own decisions, and was perfectly capable of doing so, thank you very much. That being said, it was less than shocking that he refused to let some unknown force of nature dictate who he could and could not love.

See, in his world, every person has a perfect match predetermined for them; a soulmate, if you will. While not everybody found their soulmates, they all had them. Whether platonic, romantic, or entirely sexual, very few people lacked their markers. Upon the place where you would first have skin-to-skin contact with your soulmate would be a symbol, most often depicting something crucial about your soulmate. For Enjolras’ grandfather, it was a butterfly with purple and blue flames laced through her wings, and for his grandmother, a small lion clumsily chased around a piece of paper. Leandre Enjolras was a man of courage, never failing to defend those he loved, who was ever pursuing a love of literature, and Julia Enjolras née Evermont was a strong, passionate woman with a love of biology and nature.

For some, the marker appeared at birth. For others, it would come with a significant birthday, or upon making a choice that would lead to them meeting the person with a complimenting marker. For some very unfortunate few, it faded or became grey and mottled, because their soulmate had departed.

For Enjolras, it came in a very confusing way.

Ever since he was in kindergarten and decided to talk to the quiet kid in the corner with his nose stuck in a book, a small, tan moth had fluttered around Enjolras’ right wrist. It was so small, and moved so often, that it took three weeks for anybody to notice its presence. He had known right off the bat that it represented one Julien Combeferre, who had quickly become his best friend and would remain to be for years to come. He also knew that it was not a romantic bond, and with that he was perfectly content. They did not discuss it, though, nor did they discuss the phoenix that rested in the crook of Combeferre’s neck, for they both knew that the marks did not determine their friendship, just reminded them that it was meant to last.

Enjolras had assumed that the moth would be the only marker he ever had, since only a handful of people in each country had more than that. He knew it was possible, yes, but even those who loved more than one person at once typically had a marker that tethered them to their best friend, rather than one of their lovers. It was extremely rare for a person to have multiple markers of love. Even fewer people had more than one platonic markers.

Naturally, Enjolras was the outlier.

He may have been opposed to the idea of soul bonds, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t intrigued when a black wolfish dog blurred into existence one night and began playing with the moth. Only days later, on his seventeenth birthday, he and Combeferre met a young man with wild dark hair, who was named Ignace Courfeyrac, and had on his back a phoenix and a moth flying about jovially.

Granted, he was not as intrigued then as he was when his left forearm began to burn, when he was eighteen, and he looked down to see grape wines etching themselves into his skin alongside messily scrawled names of ancient gods and paint strokes of a deep, comforting purple. The mark was elaborate, and beautiful, yet tinted with something tragic. It was, in fact, so abnormally expansive that many people mistook it for an ink tattoo, until they caught a glimpse of a name changing from Achilles to Apollo, or saw a great leaf rustle on the curiously fruitless vines. Whomever had made the marker, whomever had a matching one, did not find their way into Enjolras’ life for a long time, however, though he held a mostly apathetic attitude in that regard. If he had a tendency to run his fingers along the twisting, shifting vines when he was deep in thought, then nobody had to know.

Again, his general disapproval of soulmates did not stop him from feeling crippling pain when he blacked out one night, and awoken to find that the vines had been sliced and torn, and the words were written in illegible scrawl that tapered in several places, as if the writer could not keep a grip on the pen. The beautifully crafted swirls of paint had turned dark and angry, slashed violently instead of curled with care.

And Enjolras knew why.

Somewhere out there, his soulmate had fallen off of the edge he’d known they’d been teetering on for years. He knew why the vines were sliced in places, instead of torn all the way through. He knew why the paint strokes looked tortured and the words looked as if they were written by a drunkard. And the reason was that they were. The vines had been hacked at with a blade, and the words became lost in liquor while the paint strokes fell victim to the wretched spillings of a tortured man’s mind.

It took five days for Combeferre and Courfeyrac to coax Enjolras out of his room when he realized what it all meant. When he realized that his ever elusive soulmate had attempted to take his own life, and thankfully, failed.

For years, when Enjolras would trace the tattered vines, constantly hidden by long sleeves even in the summer, he would wonder if they were ever going to heal completely. Occasionally some of the words would come through more clearly, or the paint would form a careful spiral, but the vines rarely showed any sign of life. There was one day, during Enjolras’ sophomore year of college, that some of the sliced vines began to twirl around each other, in a desperate attempt to hold on, and when Enjolras noticed, he very nearly cried out of joy. It did not matter to him that the vines faltered and failed every now and then, simply that his soulmate had found the will to try.

In his final year at university, he met a man named René Grantaire. He was a pain in the ass, who never failed the argue with Enjolras during the meetings of Les Amis de l’ABC, the group of civil rights supporters that Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre had started.

Grantaire had bright eyes that spoke of the darkness he had seen, as well as a love for wine, classics, and art.

Had Enjolras been less apathetic about soulmates, and had Grantaire been less inclined to piss him off and avoid all direct contact with him, perhaps he would have listened to the voice at the back of his head that looked at Grantaire and whispered, maybe.

Then again, Enjolras was known to not listen to other people.

That didn’t mean a small part of him didn’t hear the voice and wonder, hope. Maybe…

But maybe not.

There was an incident, one day at the Musain, when Enjolras had been lost in thought, and Grantaire would reach out to touch him. There would be no burst of understanding, or emotion, and there would be no shift or sign of life in the mark that Enjolras hid beneath his sleeve.

Enjolras would go home, that night, and cry when he realized that the voice had been wrong, and that the vines were beginning to droop again. He would not realize that Grantaire had been wearing gloves when he laid a hand on Enjolras’ left bicep.

When speaking about it with Combeferre, he would question why he couldn’t deny the fact that it felt wrong to be falling for Grantaire when they weren’t meant to be. Naturally, Combeferre would calmly tell him that he should love whomever he loved, regardless of a petty mark, as they had always said.

After this happened, Enjolras adjusted.

He took initiative to be friendlier with Grantaire, to get to know him for who he really was. He found out that Grantaire was not always a complete pain in the ass, and that this only made it easier for Enjolras to fall for him.

It also made it harder for him to deal, when Grantaire revealed that he had a bright sun radiating red rays of light on his right arm, and that he was waiting to see if his soulmate would realize who he was. If Enjolras entirely missed the implication of Grantaire’s words, then it was really the universe’s fault, for giving Enjolras’ soul mates different marks to represent him, and for tricking Enjolras into believing that Grantaire was destined to make a mark on someone else.

Things finally came to a head when Enjolras was twenty-four, and a protest for the legality of getting marks permanently covered unexpectedly devolved into chaos.

“Ferre, get everyone you to my apartment, it’s closest!” Enjolras instructed his friend, as the crowd jostled them about. “I’m going to find Jehan and Grantaire!”

Combeferre nodded, and began to herd their friends through the crowd, while Enjolras turned to weave through the angry citizens, looking for a glimpse of either of the friends who had been separated from the group.

“Grantaire,” he called, when he thought he caught a glimmer of wild dark curls beneath a sea green beanie.

He saw his friend react, but then lost track of him as an elbow caught him in the stomach. He doubled over in pain, and it allowed for a rapid succession of events that ended with Enjolras’ shirt ripping down the sleeve as he fell backwards, his foot slipping from the first step of a staircase he hadn’t known was there.

The sensation of falling was paralyzing, when there was nothing you do to stop it.

He had a split second to wonder if he’d be able to take the stairs with a heartbeat and not too much damage to his brain, and then a strong hand was wrapping around his forearm and yanking him back to his feet.

He crashed into his savior’s chest, eyes wide and heartbeat racing, and a trill of oh fuck shot through his being when a searing, though not painful, heat surged from his forearm, breaking through the shock of nearly tumbling to what might well have been his death.

“Hey, it’s okay, I’ve got you now,” a soothing voice said, and Enjolras realized abruptly he had wrapped his arms tightly around the man and begun to cry.

The man who was his soulmate.

The man whose mark burned beneath Enjolras’ hand.

“Grantaire,” he whispered desperately.

Perhaps this soulmate thing wasn’t as overrated as he’d thought.

**Author's Note:**

> The basic idea of the fic was just that my partner at the time wanted me to write a soulmate AU for these two assholes, and I wanted to take a slightly less common route on the soul marks themselves, so I popped this out in about 2 hours and never really revised it
> 
> Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions if you have 'em! Have a lovely damn day (:


End file.
